About

My name is Ashlee and I am the owner and creator of Wylde Ivy.  I have a passion for scents, a love of color and texture, and a deep desire to create and capture all things unique and wonderful. I began making my own soaps over ten years ago when I owned and operated two hair boutiques.  As the owner and purchaser for the salons, I became quite schooled in hair and skin care needs and ingredients.  I had a deep personal love affair with a particular bar soap that I purchased through one of my suppliers.  One day that soap was discontinued.  I went into an obsessed, caffeine fueled mission to find a replacement.  Through all my shopping and research, a crazy little idea sparked to life in the back of my mind..."you can do this".  So with mad obsession fueling me, I was soon consumed by soap making books and online research and neck deep in bars of soap....my soap.

Soon, my husband and I and our family had more soap then we'd be able to use in a lifetime. With prodding from my salon customers, the first few bars of my soap were placed on the shelf for sale.  They were gone in a day.  More took their place and more, and more.  To my astonishment, the soap was selling.  My soaps needed company of the shelves.  Nothing goes with soap better then lotion.  Soon I was developing more body products like creams and lotions and even a hair care line (of coarse!).  

A year later, I constructed a very basic website with the help of the "HTML Programming for Beginners" book I stole from my husband.  The only intent of that website was for my current customers to keep in touch and see what was currently available.  Imagine my shock when orders started pouring in from all over the country and even outside of the country.  I just couldn't keep up with the demand, at least not working in the salon full time.  I made the bittersweet decision to close my salon doors, shut my eyes, and leap into the soap making biz letting Wylde Ivy take me where it may.  Here I am, over ten years later and I wouldn't change a thing!

I love soap.  Soap started all of this for me.  I will always love soap.  There is something so humble yet so extraordinary about a bar of handmade soap.  My story doesn't stop with soap though.  My story involves perfume too.   It was shortly after committing to Wylde Ivy full time that I (again with the prodding of my customers) released my first line of perfumes.  It was a simple line of perfumes, nothing more then copies of my soap scents.  I was adding new soaps all the time, creating many limited edition batches.  My library of raw fragrances used in the creation of soaps and lotions grew and grew.  I was surround by scents.  Every kind of scent imaginable.  I started experimenting, blending this with that.  New fragrances were born, my fragrances.  For me, creating scents was like creating visions or dreams.  I could create a scent that reminded me of summers spent laying the grass and cloud gazing when I was a child or of the feeling stepping into a cool, fresh, spring rain.  I fell truly, madly, and deeply in love...again.

Beyond Wylde Ivy, when I'm not daydreaming up new scents and soaps, I'm trying to keep up with my twin daughters and laughing with my husband, trying to play fetch with our dog (he doesn't like to give up the ball), and taking photographs.  I love traveling and car trips, hiking and the outdoors, watching fish swim, the ocean, and anything that grows.  

I'm always looking for new visions to turn into perfumes.